Rhetoric Beyond the Mediterranean
Giving early world rhetorics proper attention in a history of rhetoric course seems challenging because of the amount of texts and cultures to cover from outside of the Greek/Roman canon. How many world texts are there to cover, how many have English translations? Since Greek/Roman texts have had such a big impact on the Western educational system and the concepts of rhetoric that we are familiar with, it makes sense to give more attention to them.
“Rhetoric is a human phenomenon, if by rhetoric we mean the study and application of how words influence thought and action. The word rhetoric is Greek but every culture and sub-culture has language-based methods for influencing its members as well as other linguistic methods for positively and negatively influencing (attracting and repelling) outsiders.”
[It would be interesting to see the etymology of other culture’s words for rhetoric and how closely they capture a similar idea to persuasion through language. I wonder if some cultures have multiple words to discuss specific forms of rhetoric—sort of like how certain cultures have multiple words for snow.]
Interesting possible purpose of rhetoric: “[language that] positively and negatively influencing (attracting and repelling) outsiders.”
Need to be careful about labeling or excluding the “rhetoric” of other cultures. The most prudent thing to do is to give them consideration with the knowledge that Western-centric ideas of rhetoric could be clouding our judgement and also that our lack of knowledge of other cultures should keep us very conservative in our assessments.
The problem with comparing texts and traditions from different cultures: “intellectual imperialism or colonialization, which I am asserting is a fundamental tenet of comparative rhetorics” (Pullman)
Rhetoric of the oppressed (Greek): “the disempowered had methods of linguistic influence (what I think we need to identify as a rhetoric even though it is clearly not rhetoric in the sense of political discourse) and the Greeks knew it. They just didn't write about it directly because the strategies of the weak were considered unmanly, the worst aspersion one Greek could cast on another.” (Pullman)
QUESTION: What are the “strategies of the weak”?
Answer: See Odysseus--“trickery, indirection, lies, seduction, innuendo, shocking indecorum, a whole host of "unmanly" rhetorical techniques were acceptable. These are the rhetorical tools of the oppressed, of those who have no place at the table, who aren't listened to or taken seriously. These tools, known but not acknowledged, are, as it were, the shadow cast by the rhetoric of public discourse among equals. If you are not equal and therefore by default disqualified, you have to work outside the law.” (Pullman)
Greeks’ idea of manliness was important and, therefore, oratory/rhetoric was not preferred over getting what one wanted by might and force.
“Arhetorize” and “arhetoric” are words that have made an appearance this week. Probably better than “non-rhetoric” because “non-rhetorize” doesn’t work well as a verb.
Since the primary premise of the rhetorics of the oppressed is to avoid being caught, their rhetoric had to be invisible. This does seem to run counter to at least some forms of the rhetoric from the more socially powerful—these more conspicuous rhetorics had such well-known forms and conventions that the audience would always know at least something--if not everything--about the speaker’s persuasive intent.
The RSA on comparative rhetoric: “examines communicative practices across time and space by attending to historicity, specificity, self-reflexivity, processual predisposition, and imagination”; that the objects of its study “have significant ethical, epistemic, and political orientations,” including practices originating in non-canonical texts or practices that “have often been marginalized, forgotten, dismissed and/or erased altogether”; that one of its principal goals is to “embrace different ‘grids of intelligibility’ or different terms of engagement for opening new rhetorical times, places, and spaces”; and that its principal methodology includes “the art of recontextualization characterized by a navigation among and beyond the meanings of the past and the questions of the present; what is important and what is merely available” (“Symposium,” 273–274). [That’s more jargon than clear rhetoric to me.]
Kennedy’s definition is better: ““Comparative Rhetoric” as “the cross-cultural study of rhetorical traditions as they exist or have existed in different societies around the world” (Comparative, 1)”
Types of Global/non-Wester Rhetorics from the Annotated Bibliography: from https://www.presenttensejournal.org/bibliographies/an-annotated-bibliography-of-global-and-non-western-rhetorics-sources-for-comparative-rhetorical-studies/
African Rhetorics
The Americas (pre-Columbian American)
Ancient Egyptian Rhetorics
Arabic Rhetorics
Celtic (non-Anglo Irish) Rhetorics
Chinese Rhetorics
Japanese Rhetorics
Jewish Rhetorics
Korean Rhetorics
Near Eastern Rhetorics
Pedagogy for Global/Non-Greek Rhetorics
South Asian Rhetorics
Wen-Fu by Lu Chi, Rhymed prose because lacking patterns of meter, lists 5 criteria for a poem (music, harmony, feeling, restraint, and refinement)
(These first few stanzas seems to have much in common with how Aristotle defines rhetoric)
When studying the work of the Masters, I watch the
working of their minds.
Surely, facility with language & the charging of the
word with energy are effects which can be achieved
by various means
Still, the beautiful can be distinguished from the
common, the good from the mediocre.
Good writing is re-writing. “Only through writing and then revising and revising
may one gain the necessary insight.”
What’s easy to observe is not always easy to do: “This may be easy to know, but it is difficult to put
into practice.”
QUESTION: How and where do the objectives and means of the poet and the rhetor overlap?
ANSWER: Both have language as their tool; both may seek to move the audience; both can make use of aesthetic beauty.
On originality: “He gathers his words & images from those unused
by previous generations; his music comes from
melodies unplayed for a thousand years or more.” And later: “There are no new ideas, only those which rhyme
with certain classics.”
On choosing words: “He chooses from among his ideas and orders his
thoughts; he considers his words with great care and
fits them with a sense of defined proportion.
Shadowy thoughts are brought into the light of
reason; echoes are traced to their sources.
It is like following a branch to find the trembling
leaves, like following a stream to find the spring.
The poet brings light into darkness, even if that means
the simple becomes difficult or the difficult easy.”
More on revision: “On Revision
Looking back, one finds the disharmonious image;
anticipating what will come, one seeks the smooth
transition.
Even with right reason, the words will sometimes
clang, sometimes the language flows, though the ideas
tend to be trivial.
Knowing one from the other, the writing is made
clearer; confuse the two, and everything will suffer.
The General inspects his soldiers for every minutest
detail, down to a single hair.
When corrections are precise, the building stands
square and plumb.”
On grammar/style: I take the rules of grammar and guides to good
language and hold them in my heart.
A beautiful way to describe writing:
“Consider the use of letters, for all principles demand
them.
Though they travel a thousand miles & more, nothing
in the world can stop them; they traverse ten thousand
years.
Look at them one way, and they clarify laws for the
future; look at them another, and they provide models
from old masters.
The art of letters has saved governments from certain
ruin and propagates proper morals.
Through letters there is no road too distant to travel,
no idea too confusing to be ordered.
It comes like rain from clouds; it renews the vital
spirit.
Inscribed on bronze & marble, it honours every virtue;
it sings through flute and strings, and every day is made
newer.”
Fei Tzu's "The Difficulties of Persuasion" one relevant handbook for the disempowered unwilling to live in silence… the rhetoric represented by Tzu stems from an absolute imbalance of power.
Reminicscent (a little bit) of the Art of War here: “the difficult thing about persuasion is to know the mind of the person one is trying to persuade and to be able to fit one's words to it.” (Know your enemy) Although Aristotle has similar advice, so maybe Sun Tzu only comes to mind because this is Eastern/Chinese.
Points to the goal of “saving the state”: “if this enables you to gain the confidence of the ruler and save the state, then it is no disgrace for a man of ability to take such a course.” [This seems noble and selfless—even if the means by which it is achieved are less noble.]
Anecdotes about keeping your mouth shut lead to this: “It is not difficult to know a thing; what is difficult is to know how to use what you know.”